proving evolution as just a "theory"

[JonFromMinnesota]

Similarities is precisely what we expect to see in common design if it is accurate, which it is. A designer uses common materials to create and sustain life in order for it to flourish and adapt.

Could you describe the falsifiable test you used to come to this conclusion? Otherwise you're just making stuff up.

 

[JonFromMinnesota]

Having actual observation and testing that shows something changing into something it isn't already.

That's not how evolution works. So now that we've established that you don't understand the most basic concepts of biology, would you like to ask some questions so that you can gain a better understanding?

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Yes because it's what the Bible says. No reading into it, no interpretation, no guess work it says God created in six days and he created all things individually according to kinds and he created man unique of all things.

We agree man ws created in six days. But Im not ignoring the word hayah, or the fact what is a day, if as you believe the sun wasnt created until the fourth day? Imaginary sunrise and sunsets?

 

[DogmaHunter]

it's not what you said here:
"Except the logical progression of the fossil record, with no exceptions"
so we indeed found exceptions.

Your examples aren't such exception.
I was talking about "exceptions" in the sense of data that doesn't fit the model.
New data which alters the timeline a bit, is normal as we progress towards a more accurate picture while new data comes in.

This is not the same as finding primates next to trilobites.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

-_- would you suggest bringing in "another species" if humans experienced a severe population bottleneck in which only 300 individuals of our species were left? Because last I checked, human's can't actually interbreed with any other species currently alive. There are a select few organisms for which people have tried to "save a species through hybridization", but that doesn't usually work very well.

As it were, your suggestion is only generally applicable if the bottlenecked population isn't the only population remaining of individuals that can (and are willing to) breed and produce fertile offspring. However, regardless as to whether or not 20% of a population dies or 80% does, when large portions of a population dies, it inevitably reduces the variety of the gene pool, even if who ends up dying is completely random.




You're correct in that one of the easiest ways to help ensure that a child will be healthy is for the parents to be from distant populations that are unlikely to have the same recessive diseases. But, this doesn't work out well for populations that experienced bottlenecks due to a large portion of the species dying out.

And when this random mutation occurred that changed this mythical common ancestor into man and chimp, just how many did this random mutation effect at the same time?

 

[DogmaHunter]

"A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing."-

and how we can test the belief that banana and human shared a common descent?

Genetic analysis.

we cant.

Yes we can

so evolution isnt a scientific theory even according to that source.

lol

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Your examples aren't such exception.
I was talking about "exceptions" in the sense of data that doesn't fit the model.
New data which alters the timeline a bit, is normal as we progress towards a more accurate picture while new data comes in.

This is not the same as finding primates next to trilobites.

If you find primates next to trilobites you'd falsify Creation, since water animals were created before crawling things and on down the list. Most creationists just like to ignore the second word of the second verse of the Bible and not realize those six days are representative of the six periods of creation, along with the 5 destructions....

 

[Justatruthseeker]

That's what I get for letting myself be impressed by you. But I can explain very simply how you are incorrect, given that natural selection isn't random.

Let's say I have 500 coins, one side saying tails, and the other saying heads. I proceed to flip the coins. For those that land on heads, they have a trait that isn't favorable to survival, so for the generations that follow in this example, 90% of the coins with heads "die", and are removed from this example game. Every generation, 60% of the tails will die, since they don't have the unfavorable trait that the heads coins do, but that doesn't make them death proof. Now, after the first generation, which was flipped, the next generations are the addition of a coin for each one on the field, corresponding to an existing coin with the same sides as the coins from the preceding generation. So, if there is currently 30 tails, that's how many extra tails would be added. So, I play this game for a bit, and eventually, tails will dominate. Was this random? Of course not, because heads coins were removed from the population a lot more than tails coins were. It didn't matter that which side the coins had in the first "generation" was random, what persisted the best was not, and it reflects in future populations.

Except the next generation is not an addition of the same coin. You now have heads and tails and say heads and hands and tails and hands. so we now flip and both heads, tails and hands are removed. We then have heads and tails, heads and hands, tails and hands, and now also heads and feet, tails and feet, hands and feet. If you want to claim to believe in evolution then present your argument as an evolutionary argument with those changes, or stop with the strawmen......

Not quite, if this was true, then the kids would all have nearly the same skin tone as one of their parents... but they have an intermediate one. The curly hair, on the other hand, is in the dominant/recessive gene pattern.

and narry a single mutation (nor millions of years) was needed to create those new races.... which goes back to my point concerning the variation in the fossil record, that you all keep avoiding....

And the African man remains African, as the Caucasian woman remains Caucasian. As every single fossil in the fossil record remained the same from the oldest one found to the youngest one found.

As the Husky remains Husky and the Mastiff remains Mastiff. The Chinook, which appears suddenly and fully formed, just as those new forms in the fossil record do, was not a product of mutation or evolution......

 

[HiEv]

What needs clarified? Every fossil of T-Rex remains the same from the youngest to the oldest found. Not a single solitary fossil shows evidence of evolution. Each one is distinct and remains that way for every one you can find.

LOL. Do you realize that you're arguing, "All of the fossils which we've grouped together based on extreme similarity happen to be extremely similar"? And somehow you think this disproves evolution?

Not only is it silly, but it's wrong. If you want to look for evolution of a species, you have to look outside of that species. For example, just as evolution predicted, we recently discovered a new species, Timurlengia euotica, which exists between the gap from the smaller tyrannosaurs to the larger later T. rex variety of tyrannosaur, which had much sharper senses than the smaller tyrannosaurs. T. euotica has the more advanced senses, similar to T. rex, but the size of the earlier species.

The fact that we found fossils of such a clear transition between the two, in a time period between the two, just as evolution predicts, is itself evidence for evolution. If you're interested see:

New T. rex discovery proves evolution is actually true … again

And that's merely one example among many.

There were tens of thousands of peer reviewed papers saying the Milky-Way was the entire universe too.

Cite one.

The fact is, you can't. Even back as far as 1755, when Immanuel Kant speculated on the shape of our galaxy (and it turned out he was correct), even then he thought that nebulae might be separate galaxies themselves. This fact was demonstrated correct as early as 1917 by Heber Curtis.

At no point were there any "peer reviewed papers saying the Milky-Way was the entire universe."

If you have to make up lies to bolster your argument, then that's a pretty good indication of how bad your argument is.

There were peer reviewed papers about the coelacanth too, until we actually found a living one and tested its DNA tho. Funny how we don’t hear anything about the transitional colecanth anymore.

I honestly have no idea what you think you're arguing here.

Coelacanths exist. So what?

I don't think we ever heard about "the transitional coelacanth", and I don't even know what you think that means.

Coelacanths do somewhat resemble the early ancestors of tetrapods, but so what? They're a different branch. The Sarcopterygii split into the Crossopterygii and Rhipidistia, the former of which evolved into coelacanths, the latter of which evolved into Tetrapodomorpha. Also, nothing about evolution says that coelacanths have to change or die out.

I'm truly baffled as to what you think the existence of coelacanths (dis)proves.

The first thing I thought of was Tiktaalik, how does your theory account for it's appearance in the Devonian?

You mean it’s sudden appearance fully formed with no predecessors? Maybe you should ask your theory that same question......

I always laugh when creationists say "fully formed", because it just demonstrates that they don't understand what evolution actually says. Evolution doesn't say that creatures will appear with "half a wing", to pull an example numerous creationists have actually argued. All animals will be "fully formed", all the parts will work. If they didn't, it likely wouldn't have survived to evolve further.

Also, it's appearance wasn't "sudden", it was gradually evolved over about 5 million years. That may be "sudden" in geological terms, but it's a perfectly reasonable amount of time which fits the evolutionary model.

And it most certainly had predecessors, such as Panderichthys and Eusthenopteron. I don't know how you came to the conclusion that it had no ancestors. Even if we didn't have fossils of some of its ancestors (which we do), you can't jump to the conclusion that they don't exist. Even without those ancestors, we can show genetic markers which support the conclusion that these species shared a common ancestor at this time, so this is a well supported conclusoin.

Honestly, it's amazing how much wrongness you managed to fit into one single sentence.

Like E. coli remaining E. coli? Tests have been performed, you just ignore the actual conclusion of those tests. E. coli remaining E. coli shows no evolution of species at all.

OK, let me ask you, how do you determine what is or isn't E. coli? One method is to determine if it can aerobically metabolize citrate. If it can't, then it's more likely to be E. coli, because E. coli can't do that. In fact, testing for this Cit- phenotype is one way that's used to tell E. coli contamination apart from salmonella contamination, which instead has a Cit+ phenotype.

So, if E. coli evolved the ability to metabolize citrate aerobically, is it still E. coli?

Let's take a look at the E. coli long-term evolution experiment, which was done in an aerobic environment in a medium with a lot of citrate (which was originally included to help killing penicillin in other experiments). In this experiment, over tens of thousands of generations, the E. coli bacteria being studied evolved the heretofore nonexistent ability to metabolize citrate aerobically.

This is, by definition, evolution of that species (possibly into a new species, depending on how you categorize it). Something you deny exists.

Do you deny this evidence? And if one change can evolve, why can't other changes happen again later? And why can't all of those changes accumulate over many generations until it no longer sufficiently resembles those earlier generations to categorize them together?

The evidence that evolution can put one foot in front of the other is too overwhelming to deny, but if you can't deny that, then how can you deny that repeatedly putting one foot in front of another can take you a mile? I honestly don't get that.

(EDIT: Fixed accidental swap of "anaerobic" when I should have written "aerobic".)

 

[pitabread]

Similarities is precisely what we expect to see in common design if it is accurate, which it is. A designer uses common materials to create and sustain life in order for it to flourish and adapt.

But why? After all, a designer doesn't *have* to use similar materials. Could not a creative designer use whatever they wanted? What is your basis for assuming the designer would use these 'common materials'?

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Remind me again why interbreeding dogs and finches apparantly pose a problem for evolution theory?

Because dogs dont change species. Neither do finches, but since Darwin called them separate species based upon the mistaken belief they were reproductively isolated, they simply refuse to admit to that mistake and reclassify them as all the same species.

They also simply incorrectly classify subspecies in the fossil record as separate species to support their belief in speciation.

 

[gaara4158]

No, I think they walk around, looking to see differences so they can call them separate species and get their names in the book. Then when they cant find any intermediaries claim evolution.

I say they aint got a clue what is what. That they cant even get babies and adults correct, let alone breeds, i mean subspecies correct.

Who is feeding you this nonsense? Where’d you get the idea that scientists, the people whose job it is to find out about the world around us, can’t tell the difference between an ancestor and a contemporary?

And even better, you think that you, an unlettered layman, know better than those with extensive training in the field? You can’t even tell me what a “kind” is.

 

[Aman777]

But why? After all, a designer doesn't *have* to use similar materials.

Sure He did. He used the heaven/air, ground without form/dust, and water God created in the beginning. Gen 1:1-2 Everything which exists physically is made of these three creation elements. Add fire/life and you have living creatures made of the same creation elements.

Could not a creative designer use whatever they wanted?

Doesn't matter since this is the best way to achieve His goal of a perfect physical Heaven in 6 Days/Ages/Periods of Labor, filled with perfect physical Humans who are immortal. Many don't know that God's labor continues at the end of the present 6th Creative Day.

What is your basis for assuming the designer would use these 'common materials'?

Science and Scripture agree. Fact plus Faith equals God's Truth. Amen?

 

[USincognito]

incorrect:

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/nature08623.html

"Here we present well-preserved and securely dated tetrapod tracks from Polish marine tidal flat sediments of early Middle Devonian (Eifelian stage) age that are approximately 18 million years older than the earliest tetrapod body fossils and 10 million years earlier than the oldest elpistostegids. They force a radical reassessment of the timing, ecology and environmental setting of the fish–tetrapod transition, as well as the completeness of the body fossil record."

Ugh, I hate it when people who don't understand evolution, paleontology or the fossil record cite things like this. The paper proposes that basal tetrapods evolved about 18 million years earlier than the first currently known body fossils and a revised phlogeny.
Figure 5 : Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland : Nature

It does not suggest that basal tetapods evolved before sarcopterygians which would falsify evolution.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Having actual observation and testing that shows something changing into something it isn't already.

Evolution has to follow natural laws. Ask them where the laws come from that glues the elements together and causes them to evolve into life. The same God that gave Moses the Law in the Bible gives us the natural laws that we find in our Biology book.

Matthew 5:18 "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished."

 

[HiEv]

Err.... mutations are not a "'theory".

Perhaps you should read the article on evolution as a fact and a theory.

Drawing conclusion from those so called mutations is called a theory. Stephen Jay Gould described fact in science as meaning data, not absolute certainty. A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of such facts.

You do realize that you're shooting your own argument that about "mutation theory" in the foot, right?

Mutations exist. We can detect them objectively. Thus their existence is data.

There are theories which explain why mutations occur, what forms they may take, and what they might cause, but those explanations should not be confused for the thing which they are describing.

Creationism and Evolution has all the same facts. They just have different theories to explain those facts.

No, creationism doesn't have a theory at all. You just defined a scientific theory above as a well-substantiated explanation of fact, and nothing about creationism explains anything or is well-substantiated. Merely pushing one mystery onto a bigger mystery isn't an explanation, and it can't be well-substantiated if it can't be falsified.

So science has a scientific theory, while religion just has a blind-faith religious belief. That belief isn't just devoid of evidence for it, but since it isn't falsifiable, it isn't capable of having evidence for it. If you can't disprove something, then nothing can be evidence for it.

And if you care about believing the truth, you should choose a well-substantiated scientific theory over blind religious dogma every time. Due to the formal methods, rigorous testing, and the built-in error correction mechanism, the former has a far better track record than the latter.

 

[joshua 1 9]

But why? After all, a designer doesn't *have* to use similar materials. Could not a creative designer use whatever they wanted? What is your basis for assuming the designer would use these 'common materials'?

Life on earth is carbon based. Science says it does not have to be, they speculate it could be silicone based. What it could be does not matter, what matters is that life on earth is carbon based. As they say we are star stuff. Somewhere in the universe a Star had to die to create the carbon that we are made of.

Evolution does not speculate as to where the elements come from. Evolution does not speculate as to where the natural laws come from that regulates the whole process of evolution.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Mutations exist.

Yes and no one has ever shown me a beneficial mutation. We know that all things work out for the best. We know that God causes good to come out of evil. But mutations are evil, it is God that is able to turn evil around and cause good to come out of the evil we find here in the world we live in.

We live in a fallen world and mutations are a part of the fall. It is God that is doing a work to bring about redemption. This is His desire to restore all of creation to His plan and purpose. He is going to undo the harm and the damage that the devil and man has inflicted on His Creation.

 

[joshua 1 9]

nothing about creationism explains anything or is well-substantiated.

Show me, give it your best shot. The only thing that is not well-substantiated is your understanding of creationism. Not everyone understands creationism and perhaps you need someone to explain it for you to help you to understand.

 

[pitabread]

Oh we aren't trying to convince ourselves of anything. We are as comfortable in our thoughts as you are in yours. It's rather condescending for you to think we are not as solid as you.

You may feel that way. There is, however, a fundamental difference in the positions.

On the one hand, you have people advocating in the defense of science and science education. And on the other hand you have those trying to dismantle it.

It's tough given that for creationists you're forced into a position of denying aspects of mainstream science, without anything substantial to counter it. And especially tough for Young-Earth creationists that are basically denying every branch of the natural sciences and a number of the social sciences on top of that.

It's not a position I find envious.

On top of that, a lot of what creationists keep proposing is demonstrably false. For example, you keep going on about evolution being just a "belief" or "assumptions" or "not testable", etc. And yet these are demonstrably incorrect positions. Just the fact that evolution including common descent has real world application means it's clearly not a mere belief. The fact that I can point to thousands of papers testing documenting the testing of various aspects of common descent demonstrates it testable.

Of course in doing so, you'll just respond by claiming that's just evidence of "common design" or some other repetitive mantra. But if I was to ask you to present the testable, scientific model of "common design", you'd never be able to do it. Because it doesn't actually exist.

Thus, from where I sit you're stuck in a position to deny, deny, deny. At the end of the day, that's all you've got.

And it's pretty obvious don't you think that neither of us is really convincing the other? I wonder sometimes why we even do this. I thinks it's because in our human nature some folks like us just like to debate.

I'm usually here out of boredom. Half the time I'm responding to something is in line at a grocery store or something.

I don't even consider this debate. It's mostly just noise.

Even if we have no hope of actually changing someones mind. In the spiritual world its call planting seeds. It gives the Spirit of God something to work with. At least that is my thought. It's called a scriptural principle. Jesus never told us to go out and convince anyone about creation. But there is a scripture that tells us to be prepared to defend out belief. That is what we are doing.

I don't really see you as defending your belief though. From where I sit you can believe whatever you want. People have the freedom to do that (at least in free countries).

But what do you think you're defending it against though? Legitimate science is a search for understanding our universe and isn't going to change just because some people don't like the results. Reality isn't pliable in that regard.

This is why I find the creationist mindset so strange. It's basically reality denial. And I don't see where creationists think they are going with that.